Thieving ex-municipal admin clerk jailed for seven years
Former metro admin clerk and mother-of-four Stephanie Reeners was sentenced to an effective seven years behind bars for fraud and forgery amounting to R640,000 yesterday.
Reeners — who admitted to the thefts — had been employed as an administration clerk at the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality’s Central Information Centre (CIC), where she volunteered to perform some of the duties of the CIC assistant, which included the submission of building plans to the building inspectorate division.
It emerged later that she had colluded with certain draughtsmen to submit false invoices and that they would then split the proceeds.
In the city’s Commercial Crimes Court yesterday, she was finally jailed.
In March, Reeners, 48, pleaded guilty to a litany of charges including 224 counts of fraud and 227 counts of forgery totalling R640,000.
She also pleaded guilty to an additional three counts of forgery which emanated from her using her supervisor’s salary slip to create false salary advices under her name.
She had been in custody since October, when she failed to appear in court and her bail was revoked.
In mitigation of sentence earlier yesterday, defence attorney Anlen Murray argued that Reeners had four children, three of them still minors.
Since her incarceration, they had been staying with family members in Pretoria.
Though her children were no longer living with her, she was still their primary caregiver, Murray said.
It emerged that during her employment with the municipality, Reeners had volunteered to perform some of the duties of the CIC assistant.
Her duties entailed receiving and quality checking new building plans which were submitted to the building inspectorate by architects and draughtsmen.
Reeners had been approached by a draughtsman, who had been well known to her, asking for help regarding a plan he had submitted to the municipality, but due to financial problems he could not afford the submission fees.
Reeners offered to pay the fee on his behalf.
The draughtsman, not identified in court, then allegedly told Reeners about a woman in Zwide who, after receiving fraudulent invoices, would submit them and then split the proceeds with him.
Murray said soon after this, Reeners was approached by numerous other draughtspeople who asked for the same “favour”.
Murray said her client had then misappropriated the money for her personal use.
Between February 2012 and November 2017, Reeners made 224 fraudulent transactions and created 227 forged documents.
Murray said Reeners was remorseful for her actions but that she simply did not have the money to reimburse the municipality.
State advocate Wilhelm de Villiers argued for a lengthy term of imprisonment.
De Villiers said the offences were serious and a message needed to be sent that offences such as these would not be tolerated.
“[Reeners] stole from the community, she stole my tax money,” De Villiers said.
“She chose to form an alliance with people who were prepared to enrich themselves with ratepayers’ money.
“The court needs to send out the right message — crime does not pay.”
Magistrate Nolitha Bara sentenced Reeners to an effective seven years behind bars.
While Bara took into account that Reeners still had young children, she agreed with the state that a message needed to be brought across to the community that fraud and forgery offences were serious and should be dealt with accordingly.